Stationery for Geeks to Drool Over…

Maybe I’m just being fanciful, but I think there’s a wonderful appeal about stationery. That’s right – pens, paper, pencils, envelopes, stickers, anything you can use to write letters (remember those old-fashioned things?) to your loved ones – or complain to The Wachowski Brothers about the sequels to The Matrix. Take your pick.

Stationery doesn’t have to be terrible pens you lifted from your workplace or boring sheets of lined paper that make you remember school and start rocking back and forth in a self-calming manner. There are some people who are very fussy about the stationery they use, and this post is my attempt to pay tribute to them while explaining why this is so fascinating to those out of the loop.

World-Famous Stationery

Until I stumbled on the stationery flavor of geekiness (and, I’ll admit, adopted it just a bit myself), I wasn’t aware that the Bic pen I got from the dollar store was any different from a high-end metal pen with doodads attached. But apparently there’s a world of difference!

For instance, those spiral-bound notebooks aren’t the only option for recording ideas, notes, rants, poems, or anything else you need to remember. A lot of people swear by Moleskines, and there’s an equally devoted and fierce crowd of supporters for other brands who swear theirs are better. Who’d have known?! I just got my first Moleskine, and I’ll let you know if it lives up to expectations. (Psst… if you like hard drive hacks, check this out! I think it looks awesome and classy.)

Then there are world-famous pen brands, like Midori (which also sells a lot of famous paper) and Mont Blanc, just to name a few brands. Let’s not even get into the famous brands for highlighters, rulers, stickers, paper, and just about everything else in your home office.

Making Your Own Stationery

With such amazing laser printers available at home now, and with there being a strong chance you have a fairly or very good printer yourself, this is an option I couldn’t resist recommending. What could be more awesome, after all?

With the fact that you can print just about anything you like on a piece of stationery, you can customize to your heart’s content with home printing or by having a stationery designer do it for you. If you want to reference memes, Rickroll people by letter, or add witty quotes from well-known geeks, go ahead!

There are plenty of applications you can use to do this, from Microsoft Word to Photoshop and InDesign, depending on how much time you have to invest in your stationery creation and whether you’re really super-serious about it.

If you’re up for a challenge, try making your own personalized stationery with some kind of logo or motif that appears on all the pieces (envelope, letter, notepad, etc).

Just Plain Geeky Stationery

There are a lot of stationery makers who moonlight as geeks, and the existence of Paper Wheel Press proves it. After all, they’ve produced one of the best “I’m sorry” cards I’ve ever seen. Check it out here. Brilliance.

A quick Etsy search for geeky stationery turns up so very much more, and that’s just the beginning… (Try searches for “geek card” and “geek notebook” if you don’t believe me.)

What About You?

Are you a stationery geek, and if so, did I do a good job portraying a little bit of your geeky world? What famous brands or ways of bringing geeky back to the dark ages before computers do you think everyone should try?

If you’re not a geek about stationery, are you at all picky about what you use, or do you just grab whatever comes to hand?

About The Author

z

Z is the last letter of the dreamgirl alphabet, but would like to think not the least. She can usually be found hunched over a Macbook or bathed in the glow of her iMac, knitting funky things her grandmother would disapprove of, learning Japanese, or sending a postcard to reality to try and stay in touch with it. Her friends call her a cat, and her catnip is chocolate.